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Barack Obama may have been the most exciting thing going in politics this season, but he wasn't the only exciting thing. During the campaign season, I had the opportunity to work with a promising young brother, Craig Schley, who has his eyes set on Charlie Rangel's U.S. Congressional seat. Craig Schley did not win but, winning isn't everything - at least not the first time. He has made an impact, and is already beefing up his campaign for 2010. Once people get to know him better, I do not think he will have much problem slaying the political giant. People in District 15 have expressed that we too are ready for change!

Having jumped in the campaign at the eleventh hour, I will admit, I wasn't much help on the Craig Schley trail; most of the heavy lifting had already been done. It was exciting to be a part of it all though, even for a few minutes, and will be even more exciting to help him work his way towards a 2010 victory.

Schley's organization - VOTE (Voices of the Everyday) People For Change - is hosting a Thank You event for all of the friends and supporters who helped make the campaign a reality. If you are in the Harlem area and would like to learn more about the candidate, this would be a good opportunity for you to drop by and meet him. You have my personal invitation!

Details are as follows:

For more information about Craig Schley and/or VOTE People For Change, visit his web site: www.CraigSchley.com

Keep up with Craig's social and political ideas by subscribing to his blog - The Political Pugilist - on the Black Star News web site. In fact, moving back into the Inaugural mindset, I would like to share Craig's recent entry. With his permission, I have copied it below:

The Emancipation Inauguration: Obama-mania in black America

written by Craig Schley

The inescapable facts: On January 20, 2009, at high noon, Washington D.C. time, in the capitol of this nation, shrouded in white-concrete structures, America will swear in Barack Obama as its 44th President.

The entire nation, if not the whole world, will watch a ceremony befitting a newly crowned king. If this were a monarchy, there might be three to four million subjects in attendance for the inaugural ball, “ba dis hera—is A melricca,” said Fidla in the movie “Roots”.

How we Americans have seen it, despite his momma and poppa’s background, for the past 300 years, the likes of Obama have been considered, simply, black; and, guess what? According to the 95% of the African-Americans who voted for Obama, the thinking hasn’t changed. Oh they might say, “I voted

for Obama because of his qualifications,” but in private, I’m here to tell you, race mattered, and that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“No people can profit or be helped under any institution, which [is] not the outcome of [their] own character.” (Edward Blyden, 1903). Black people have longed to see themselves as actual participants, involved not merely in the labor of this country’s business, but in roles of leadership and responsibility.

For decades, blacks waiting to see themselves at the helm of the very society that enslaved them, put their money and ballots where their voices should have been all along. This election was the pinnacle of such participation.

And so, for now, at least until the band stops playing, what Obama does in office is in large degree irrelevant to the exuberance experienced in African-American communities across the country…or is it the image of a black man finally moving into the White House is enough to sing Oh-happy day, O-happy day!

Barack Obama, President of the United States. This is historic for a mulititude of reasons. Like most people, I've turned this event over in my mind a million times; I am still processing it, its magnitude and implications on the global community; wondering what this will mean for our young people and the way we perceive ourselves and, most of all, contemplating the role we might all play to help our new President succeed. On November 5th, I wondered what Time Wise would have to say - as so often he manages to articulate what many of us are thinking, but haven't yet managed to put into words. I found the following on his blog, and just wanted to share it with you...

P.S. - A Tim Wise read is always long, but worthwhile :-)

Good, and Now Back to Work:Avoiding Both Cynicism and Overconfidence in the Age of ObamaBy Tim Wise
November 5, 2008

(Believe it or not, this is merely an excerpt. Find the full article on hins blog: HERE)

"So let us be clear as to what tonight meant:

It was a defeat for the right-wing echo chamber and its rhetorical
stormtroopers, foremost among them Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and
Glenn Beck.

It was a defeat for the crazed mobs ever-present at McCain/Palin
rallies, what with their venomous libels against Obama, their
hate-addled brains spewing forth one after another racist and
religiously chauvinistic calumny upon his head and those of his
supporters.

It was a defeat for the internet rumor-pimps who insisted to all they
could reach with a functioning e-mail address that Obama was not
really a citizen. Or perhaps he was, but he was a Muslim, or perhaps
not a Muslim, but probably a black supremacist, or maybe not that
either, but surely the anti-christ, and most definitely a baby-killer.

It was a defeat for those who believed McCain and Palin would be
delivered the victory by the hand of almighty God, because their
theological and eschatological vacuity so regularly gets in the way
of their ability to think. As such, it was a setback for the
religious fascists in the far-right Christian community whose belief
that God is on their side has always made them especially dangerous.
Now, having lost, perhaps at least some of these will be forced to
ponder what went wrong. If we're lucky, perhaps some will suffer the
kind of crisis of faith that often prefaces a complete nervous
breakdown. Either way, it's nice just to ruin their
Young-Earth-Creationist-I-Have-an-Angel-on-My-Shoulder day.

It was a defeat for the demagogues who tried in so many ways to push
the buttons of white racism--the old-fashioned kind, or what I call
Racism 1.0--by using thinly-veiled racialized language throughout the
campaign. Appeals to Joe Six-Pack, "values voters," blue-collar
voters, or hockey moms, though never explicitly racialized, were
transparent to all but the most obtuse, as were terms like
"terrorist" when used to describe Obama. Likewise, the attempt to
race-bait the economic crisis by blaming it on loans to poor folks of
color through the Community Reinvestment Act, or community activists
like the folks at ACORN, failed, and this matters. No, it doesn't
mean that white America has rejected racism. Indeed, I have been
quite deliberate for months about pointing out the way that racism
1.0 may be traded in only to be replaced by racism 2.0 (which allows
whites to still view most folks of color negatively but carve out
exceptions for those few who make us feel comfortable and who we see
as "different"). And yet, that tonight was a drubbing for that 1.0
version of racism still matters.

And tonight was a victory for a few things too.

It was a victory for youth, and their social and political
sensibilities. It was the young, casting away the politics of their
parents and even grandparents, and turning the corner to a new day,
perhaps naively, and too optimistic about the road from here, but
nonetheless in a way that has historically almost always been good
for the country. Much as youth were inspired by a relatively moderate
John F. Kennedy (who was, on balance, far less progressive than Obama
in many ways), and much as they then formed the frontline troops for
so much of the social justice activism of the following fifteen
years, so too can such a thing be forseen now. That Kennedy may have
been quite restrained in his social justice sensibilities did not
matter: the young people whose energy he helped unleash took things
in their own direction and outgrew him rather quickly in their
progression to the left.

Tonight was also a victory for the possibility of greater
cross-racial alliance building. Although Obama failed to win most
white votes, and although it is no doubt true that many of the whites
who did vote for him nonetheless hold to any number of negative and
racist stereotypes about the larger black and brown communities of
this nation, it it still the case that black, brown and white worked
together in this effort as they have rarely done before. And many
whites who worked for Obama, precisely because they got to see, and
hear, and feel the racist vitriol still animating far too many of our
nation's people, will now be wiser for the experience when it comes
to understanding how much more work remains to be done on the racial
justice front. Let us build on that newfound knowledge, and that
newfound energy, and create real white allyship with community-based
leaders of color as we move forward in the years to come.

But now for the other side of things.

First and foremost, please know that none of these victories will
amount to much unless we do that which needs to be done so as to turn
a singular event about one man, into a true social movement (which,
despite what some claim, it is not yet and has never been).

And so it is back to work. Oh yes, we can savor the moment for a
while, for a few days, perhaps a week. But well before inauguration
day we will need to be back on the job, in the community, in the
streets, where democracy is made, demanding equity and justice in
places where it hasn't been seen in decades, if ever. Because for all
the talk of hope and change, there is nothing--absolutely, positively
nothing--about real change that is inevitable. And hope, absent real
pressure and forward motion to actualize one's dreams, is sterile and
even dangerous. Hope, absent commitment is the enemy of change,
capable of translating to a giving away of one's agency, to a
relinquishing of the need to do more than just show up every few
years and push a button or pull a lever.

This means hooking up now with the grass roots organizations in the
communities where we live, prioritizing their struggles, joining and
serving with their constituents, following leaders grounded in the
community who are accountable not to Barack Obama, but the people who
helped elect him. Let Obama follow, while the people lead, in other
words.

For we who are white it means going back into our white spaces and
challenging our brothers and sisters, parents, neighbors, colleagues
and friends--and ourselves--on the racial biases that still too often
permeate their and our lives, and making sure they know that the
success of one man of color does not equate to the eradication of
systemic racial inequity.

So are we ready for the heavy lifting? This was, after all, merely
the warmup exercise, somewhat akin to stretching before a really long
run. Or perhaps it was the first lap, but either way, now the baton
has been handed to you, to us. We must not, cannot, afford to drop
it. There is too much at stake.

The worst thing that could happen now would be for us to go back to
sleep; to allow the cool poise of Obama's prose to lull us into
slumber like the cool on the underside of the pillow. For in the
light of day, when fully awake, it becomes impossible not to see the
incompleteness of the task so far."